Strategic leadership towards sustainability - individuals, organizations, and communities using systems thinking to create a better future that is peaceful, healthy, prosperous, just, equitable, and resilient for generations to come.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Climate disruption and national security

With the backdrop of the UN parties gear up for pre-Copenhagen talks in Bonn this week, the New York Times ran a great piece yesterday about the threat to national security and peace that climate disruption represents.

A to-the-point quote:

“We will pay for this one way or another,” Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired Marine and the former head of the Central Command, wrote recently in a report he prepared as a member of a military advisory board on energy and climate at CNA, a private group that does research for the Navy. “We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind.

“Or we will pay the price later in military terms,” he warned. “And that will involve human lives.”